WASHINGTON – The chief congressional Chinagate investigator said yesterday that U.S. research labs are still losing vital intelligence secrets to Beijing.
”This problem is an ongoing problem,” Rep. Chris Cox (R-Calif.) said yesterday.
”Our committee believes that not only now, but for the indefinite future, we have serious counterintelligence problems at our national laboratories and elsewhere throughout the government,” Cox said on ABC’s ”This Week.”
Cox said his special Chinagate committee plans to release its 700-page report on Chinese espionage in the next two weeks. The White House already has a copy of the report and is trying to keep most of it secret.
Cox said his committee’s report also would deal in part with campaign contributions and the possible effect on policy.
”The issues of Chinese money and campaign contributions are covered in our report, although it is not the great bulk of our report,” Cox said.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson last week fired a Los Alamos, N.M., scientist, Taiwanese-born Wen Ho Lee, on suspicions that Lee passed critical secrets about miniature nuclear warheads to China more than a decade ago.
Lee hasn’t been charged, and Newsweek reports that the FBI now believes it has virtually no chance of making a case against him.
Richardson denied Cox’s assertion that the Chinese are still infiltrating the government’s weapons labs.
”I believe that we have taken dramatic steps to deal with this problem … sufficient steps,” Richardson said on ABC.
”We have top-notch security right now.”
But the top Democrat on the Cox committee, Rep. Norm Dicks of Washington, agreed with Cox that Chinese spying is ”very serious, very significant.”
”They have an effort to gain technology from every part of American life,” Dicks said.
Richardson and White House National Security Adviser Sandy Berger both conceded that the Chinese did benefit from the theft of nuclear-weapons secrets from Los Alamos.
Republicans have complained that the Clinton administration didn’t adequately inform Congress about the extent of the spying – and still hasn’t leveled with the American people about it.
”The basic problem is the administration has to come clean with the people of this country and the Congress,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said on NBC’s ”Meet the Press.”